WordPress often is targeted by hackers, due to its popularity.

In April 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to large-scale brute force attacks.

These attacks were caused by botnets (computers infected with malware and programmed to attack other vulnerable sites).

How To Protect Your WordPress Site From A Brute-Force Attack

What Is A Brute-Force Attack?

A brute-force attack is a technique used to break an encryption or authentication system by trying all possibilities.

(Source: Chinese University Of Hong Kong)

One of the many ways hackers will attempt to break into WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This can be done using scripts and tools that can work through hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your website could be easily hacked by repeated attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute force” login attack.

Botnet Definition

A botnet is a number of Internet-connected computers communicating with other similar machines in an effort to complete repetitive tasks and objectives. This can be as mundane as keeping control of an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, or it could be used to send spam email or participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks. The word botnet is a combination of the words robot and network.

(Source: Wikipedia.org)

”Botnets” are networks of computers that have been infected with malicious software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners even being aware that this is going on.

Botnets are regularly used to blast out mass spam emails from the infected computers of compromised user accounts.

Below is a screenshot taken from an online security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009 …

(The Zeus botnet has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009. Screenshot source: SecureList.com)

These botnet attacks are highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of hosting companies in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user administration areas. The brute-force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked every day.

News of this worldwide brute force attack was widely reported in all of the major webhosting companiesand leading technology media publications, such as TechNews Daily, Forbes, PC Magazine, BBC News, Tech Crunch, and even on the official US Department of Homeland Security website …

(WordPress is frequently the target of large-scale attacks by hackers, due to its popularity)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

No. In fact, there are lots of great reasons why you should continue using WordPress if you are concerned at all about the security of your web presence.

To understand what makes WordPress a very secure web platform, read this article: Is WordPress A Secure Website Platform?

It’s important to note that, in the case of April 2013 mass brute-force attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using other CMS platforms like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress, said this about the brute-force attacks:

It is a “simple” script that attempts to login using the admin login and a generated password. So if your password is too short or based on dictionary words it will be guessed and then the script can login legitimately and do whatever it wants including installing scripts (as plugins) or editing files. The attack tries to guess your password, if it succeeds, the most secure site in the world is wide open because they have your password.

(MikeLittle.org)

How To Prevent Your WordPress Blog From Brute-Force Attacks – 10 Security Measures

You may think that your website or blog has no significant value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, all websites are an opportunity to gain some benefit at your expense.

If a hacker can find a way to gain remote control of your website or blog, the website or blog can then be used as a “bot” to attack more highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links promoting things like gambling, porn, etc. inserted in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites and other websites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasty things.

The reality is that hackers are most likely looking for security weaknesses and trying to break into your blog while you are reading these very words. Whether they can hack into your site successfully will depend on how hard you have made it for them to continue trying until they either discover a way to get in, or give up and go look for a less protected target.

How Much Information About Your Site Are You Broadcasting To Hackers?

If you visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security check …

(WP Security Scan Screenshot image: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the check returns various results and information about your WordPress setup …

(WP security check results. Product image source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the above tool that if you are able to freely access all of this information about your website, then hackers can too.

(Product image source: BlogDefender website)

Being able to see what version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories in your site can be useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about potential security weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you are not precautionary steps to bolster the security of your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations around the world!

When a website or blog is broken into, site owners can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been interfered with or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner even being aware that this has occurred.

To avoid the heartache and aggravation (and significant financial loss) of discovering that your website or blog has been hacked into, we have listed below ten essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute-force botnet hacking attempts.

Note: Some of the measures listed below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you are not technical, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Host

Get in touch with your web host and ask them exactly what security measures they have put in place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they do to ensure that your server files and data get backed up.

Make sure that your hosting service regularly backs up your sites and that, if anything should happen, you can easily get your files back.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Regular WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Frequently Updated

You should never rely on your hosting company for your site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or get this done for you and develop a habit of religiously performing a complete WordPress site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. daily, weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

• All unnecessary data and files are deleted,
• All WordPress data and files are free of errors, optimized and backed up,
• All WP plugins, themes and software components are up-to-date,
• etc …

A full WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP website or blog frequently backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WP site completely backed up and updated is. WordPress maintenance is not hard or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. If you do not want to learn how to do WP maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your site is the second most important thing you must do after making sure that you are still breathing!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Copy And Protect Your WP Website With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

Security Measure #3 – Do Not Use “Admin” As Your Admin Username

The mass brute force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels by exploiting WP sites using “admin” as the username.

For reasons of website security, never set up sites with the username admin. This is the first area hackers will test. If your site’s username is “admin”, you need to change this immediately.

For a simple tutorial for admin users that shows you how to change your WordPress admin username, go here: Changing Your WordPress Admin User Name

Security Measure #4 – Choose Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually hits a username and password field with different strings of characters trying to guess the right login combination that will give the hacker access to your site.

Unless some measure is put into place to stop the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, become very easy targets for brute-force attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that is at least eight characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

If you have trouble coming up with strong passwords or are reluctant to set up different passwords for all of your online logins, then use a password management tool like Roboform …

(Roboform is a password management program you can use to create different strong passwords)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to change your password, go here: Changing A Password In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To Your WP Config File

The wp-config.php file allows WordPress to communicate with the database to store and retrieve data and is used to define advanced WordPress options.

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will try to access the wp-config.php file, because this file contains important information about your site’s database, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow them to change anything in your database, create a user account, upload files and take control of your site.

To protect your WordPress site from being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent your wp-config.php file from being easily accessed. This requires knowing how to edit database information, move files around in your server and changing access permissions.

Security Measure #6 – Delete Or Rename Unnecessary Installation Files

Delete or rename your install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files.

These files can be deleted after installation. If you don’t want to remove these files, just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress Blog, Plugins And Themes Up-To-Date

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities in outdated versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including outdated versions of plugins and themes.

Make sure to keep your WordPress application files, plugins, themes, etc. up-to-date.

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor feature that lets the site administrator edit theme and plugin code inside the dashboard.

In WordPress, you can access the WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from your main menu …

(The WordPress theme editor is accessible via the WordPress admin menu)

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin to view and change your WordPress files, or cause mayhem on your site.

If you want to prevent unauthorized people from being able to access your WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Protect The WordPress Uploads Directory

The “uploads” folder stores all the media files that get uploaded to your blog.

Normally, this folder is visible to online users. All a person needs to do to view all of the contents in the “uploads” folder is visit the directory using their browser …

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, anyone can upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your website.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users from viewing your ‘uploads’ folder and other important directories. This can be done using plugins, setting file permissions, uploading a blank index.php file (this is literally a file with nothing in it named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to get professional assistance if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use WordPress Security Plugins

Several WordPress security plugins are available that will address most common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing hackers from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your website from malicious software, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One WordPress plugin that seems to do a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP total security software solution)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and fixes most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

Another great plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender WordPress Security Product Suite

(Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress Websites)

Blog Defender is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.

BlogDefender scans you website for potential security weaknesses …

And then shows you how to fix these quickly, easily and inexpensively …

If you don’t want to invest in a security plugin like SecureScanPro or BlogDefender, you can use various free plugins, such as Limit Login Attempts …

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like keeping your WordPress core files, WordPress plugins and themes updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to malicious by hackers and bots.

Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, website security is something you cannot afford to ignore.

As one last reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users following the large-scale brute force attacks by botnets on WordPress in 2013 …

Owners of websites based on WordPress CMS must improve at least basic security settings and implement best practices such as the use of robust passwords and the accurate management of “admin” accounts.

Pierluigi Paganini, Chief Information Security Officer, Security Affairs

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As you can see, WordPress security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has shown you what to do to prevent brute force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please seek help from a WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email whenever we publish new information on WordPress security and tutorials about new security plugins and solutions.

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